WHS AP Psychology

Unit 8: Motivation, Emotion and Stress

Essential Task 8-3: Essential Task: Identify and apply basic motivational concepts to understand behavior with specific attention to instincts for animals, biological factors like needs, drives, and homeostasis, and operant conditioning factors like incentives, and intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators.

We are here

Motivation & Emotion

Stress

Sources Measures

Theories

Effects Coping

Motivation

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Drive Reduction

TheoryArousal Theory

Intrinsic/Extrinsic

Motivation

Human Drives

Theories of Emotion

James-Lange Cognitive Appraisal

Schachter two-factor

Cannon-Bard

Opponent Process

Explain complex motives (eating, aggression,

achievement and sex)

Essential Task 8-3:

• Basic motivational concepts to understand behavior – Instincts for animals– Biological factors like 

• Drives (Primary vs. Secondary)• Homeostasis

– Operant conditioning factors• Incentives• intrinsic motivators• Extrinsic motivators

Outline

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Motives vs. Emotions

• Motive– Specific need or desire, such as hunger,

thirst, or achievement, that prompts goal-directed behavior

– a need or desire that energizes behavior and directs it towards a goal.

• Emotion– Feeling, such as fear, joy, or surprise, that

underlies behavior

Instincts for animals NOT humans.

• Instincts are complex behaviors that have fixed patterns throughout the species and are not learned (Tinbergen, 1951).

Outline

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Humans don’t have instincts

• Fell out of favor in psychology• A Meta-analysis during the height of this

craze found 5759 ‘instincts’• Most important human behavior is

learned• Human behavior is rarely inflexible and

found throughout the species• Humans have reflexes but not instincts.

Biological Drives (Primary Drives)

• Unlearned drive based on a physiological state found in all animals

- Motivate behavior necessary for survival• Hypothalamus

– Hunger– Thirst– Sex

• Evolutionary biology talks about the four Fs (fighting, fleeing, feeding and reproducing).

Homeostasis – explains why we stop fulfilling biological drives.• The ability or tendency of an

organism to maintain internal equilibrium or balance.

• A state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.

Secondary Drives – not biologically dictated

• Learned drives• Wealth• Success• Fame

Operant Conditioning Factors

• Incentives – environmental cues that trigger a motive.

• When a stimulus creates goal-directed behavior

Intrinsic Motivators

• Refers to motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or outside rewards, such as money or grades.

• It is stronger than external motivation

Extrinsic Motivators

• Refers to motivation that comes from external or outside rewards, such as money or grades.